Graphic Narratives about South Asia and South Asian America Aesthetics and Politics

This book explores the field of Comics Studies in South Asia, illuminating an art form in which there has been a much-documented explosion of recent interest.

A diverse group of scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America examine aesthetics, politics, and ideology in sequential art about South Asia and South Asian America. The book features contributions which address gender violence; authoritarian politics; caste discrimination; environmentalism; racism; and urban street art, amongst others. The unique interdisciplinary span of the volume considers mass popular comic books as well as the graphic novel.

This edited volume would be of interest to those studying the influence of graphic novels, graphic narratives, and comic books in South Asia, as well as researchers interested in what these forms might have to say about important issues in society. This book was originally published as a special issue of the South Asian Review journal.

Foreword Introduction: South Asia in Graphic Narratives 1. The Fear of Iconoclasm: Genre and Medium Transformations from Comics to Graphic Novels in Amar Chitra Katha, Bhimayana, and Munnu 2. Mapping Postcolonial Masculinity in Sarnath Banerjee’s The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers 3. Endangered (and Endangering) Species: Exploring the Animacy Hierarchy in Malik Sajad’s Munnu 4. Appupen’s Posthuman Gothic: The Snake and the Lotus 5. Graphic Delhi: Narrating the Indian Emergency, 1975–1977 in Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm 6. The Art of Postcolonial Resistance and Multispecies Storytelling in Malik Sajad’s Graphic Novel Munnu: A Boy From Kashmir 7. Slow Violence and Water Racism in Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri 8. Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri as Text/Image Activism and Cli-Fi 9. Nationalism and the Intangible Effects of Violence in Malik Sajad’s Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir 10. Indian Graphic Novels: Visual Intertextualities, Mixed Media and the "Glocal" Reader 11. Aesthetics, Gender, and Canon in Anti-Caste Graphic Narratives, A Gardener in the Wasteland and Bhimayana 12. The Representation of Gender and Sexuality in Priya’s Shakti (2012) 13. The Urban Experience of Displacement: Re-Viewing Dhaka through Street Art and Graphic Narrative 14. I Am the Maker of My Image: Marvel’s No Normal and the Comic Book Muslim Woman

Kavita Daiya is Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and Associate Professor of English at George Washington University, USA. She has published several articles, as well as the book Violent Belongings: Partition, Gender, and National Culture in Postcolonial India ([2008], 2011).